East Asian

Here is a lovely seasonal dish that's fresh and delicate. Note that there is no raw fish in this recipe; the word sushi simply denotes that a dish features seasoned rice, which can be served with a variety of accompaniments, including raw seafood. This type of sushi is called chirashi-sushi (chirashi means "scattered"), and the rice is mixed with asparagus, thin strips of carrot, and cooked shrimp.

This recipe was created to accompany Sophisticated Stir-Fried Rice and Szechuan -Flavored Country Style Spareribs .

Even though Aux Delices des Bois left Tribeca, Thierry and I still love Zutto, the sushi bar that was near our warehouse. It dates back to when Tribeca's cast-iron canopies cast their shadows on silent streets at night. Its metal loading dock held two tables, the precursor to the neighborhood's current profusion of loading-dock cafes. One evening the sushi chef, Albert Tse, made us this special dish, using a fish from each of the seven seas. Kind of like a Japanese version of the ancient French dish Coquilles St-Jacques, it combines fin fish and aromatic oyster mushrooms with the scallops and sharpens the flavor with rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, and seaweed. If scallop shells aren't handy, use any ovenproof baking dish.

Dashi Active time: 5 min Start to finish: 30 min Elizabeth Andoh's recipe for dashi provides more than you'll need for the dipping sauce but just enough extra for two nice bowls of miso soup: Heat up the stock and stir in a couple of tablespoons of miso, a handful of diced tofu, and a sprinkling of sliced scallion.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from chef Neil Perry's book Rockpool. Neil also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. For your convenience, we've converted the measures — with as much accuracy as possible — from Australian to American. For those who have metric equipment and wish to follow Neil's recipe to the milliliter, we've included the original measures too. To read more about Neil and Australian cuisine, click here. This dish is a take on a Korean salad of raw beef with a sesame-oil dressing, raw egg yolk, Chinese cabbage and a combination of sesame seeds and pine nuts. The beef is almost frozen, and the crisp texture is offset by the silkiness of the egg yolk and the creaminess of the pine nuts. This dish is so good that in the old days Greg Frazer, Barry McDonald and I have been known to start with one and have another for dessert at the end of a meal. I decided to do a tuna dish inspired by this, and since it was raw and used an egg yolk, I called it Korean Tuna Tartare. The times I have taken it off the menu have been met with firm resistance from regular customers.

I discovered Pot Stickers at about the same time I was introduced to Scallion Cakes. Pan-fried on only one side, the dough for these dumplings is at once crisp and chewy. When I was about eleven years old, I could sometimes devour a dozen of these fried dumplings at one sitting. It was such a sweet pleasure to eat as much as you wanted and still be a skinny child. Filled with pork, cabbage, and a rich broth, every bite was heavenly. The secret of these pot stickers is to reduce the Homemade Chicken Broth until it is concentrated enough to jell when refrigerated. The broth should then be roughly chopped and stirred into the filling mixture right before the dumplings are formed. The Pot Stickers are pan-fried only on one side a few minutes until golden. A little water is added, the lid is placed on the pan, and then, as the dumplings steam-cook, the broth melts. To eat, place a pot sticker in a deep spoon (traditionally, a Chinese porcelain spoon) and sprinkle with a few ginger shreds and a little red rice vinegar. Gently bite into the dumpling and the delicious broth that has now melded with the flavors of the pork filling will burst forth.

Also known as jook, congee turns up in Chinese households morning, noon, and night. This thick rendition is made heartier with the addition of chicken.

We love this recipe as much for the soy-glazed bonito flakes, with their maddeningly good smoky-savory-sweet flavor, as for making such great use of leftovers.

Trimming all corners and ragged edges from the carrots and potatoes is very Japanese; rounded edges also ensure even cooking. In Japan we used metal molds to cut our carrots into plum blossoms for a seasonal motif. Active time: 30 min Start to finish: 1 1/2 hr

Here, you get an entire meal with a single, 45-minute recipe. Udon, Japanese wheat noodles with a chewy, stretchy texture, are available dried in the Asian food section of most supermarkets (along with mirin and chile paste with garlic) or fresh in the produce section. Sliced pineapple or mango sorbet would be an ideal dessert.

This dish is similar to classic Peking duck in the way that it is eaten: Slices of breast meat, crisp skin, scallion, and hoisin sauce are rolled inside pancakes. In a traditional rendition the meat from the duck legs would be stir-fried with vegetables, but here the duck legs are served whole. Be sure to allow three days for this duck to dry in the refrigerator.

Chinese viceroy Li Hung Chang, visiting San Francisco's Palace Hotel in the 1890s, requested vegetables with a bit of meat "job suey," or "in fine pieces," and chef Joseph Herder obliged.

Active time: 45 min Start to finish: 45 min